This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

More than six months into the Senate spending affair it is possible that none of Stephen Harper’s otherwise combative senior ministers want to volunteer to risk a political limb in the scandal’s muddy trenches.

Even if they did, it may be that none of them would be willing to execute the masochistic marching orders emanating from Harper’s PMO that have so far only increased the government’s daily suffering in question period.

Hence the prime minister’s rookie parliamentary secretary is sent to the front to stand in for Harper whenever he is away.

But if Oak-Ridges Markham MP Paul Calandra is on a mission to shore up the defence of the government on the Senate issue, that mission is a kamikaze one that is essentially based on substantiating a plea of temporary political insanity from the top levels of the Conservative government.

How else to describe a strategy that systematically involves the government maniacally digging itself deeper in what is fast becoming a bottomless credibility hole?

Article Continued Below

With every innuendo-laced answer, Calandra leads the House of Commons — and his government along with it — further into La La Land.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is an approach that (understandably) inspires little confidence and even less enthusiasm within the ranks of the Conservative caucus.

It can’t just be the burden of having to sign hundreds of Christmas cards before the House rises for the holidays that accounts for the dejected body language of so many Conservative MPs as Calandra does his PMO-orchestrated song-and-dance.

Notwithstanding Calandra’s example, there are signs that more and more government MPs are becoming disinclined to remain passive hostages to the PMO.

Assertions of ministerial independence are becoming commonplace this fall with Jason Kenney — a minister whose services to the government have become as indispensable as those of Paul Martin’s once were to Jean Chrétien and whose leadership ambitions are increasingly not dissimilar — leading the charge.

At the same time Huffington Post reports that some Conservative MPs have been discussing ways to curb the power that party leaders yield on their caucuses. Former minister Michael Chong is tabling a bill that would even allow MPs to vote out their leader.

In the big picture of parliamentary democracy, that would be a positive development, for it is only by taking matters in their own hands that MPs will restore some much needed meaningfulness (and dignity) to their roles in the Commons.

But if the past is any indication, the internal momentum for such reforms within a governing caucus is inversely proportional to the standing of the prime minister within the party. A decade ago, some of the early challenges to former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s authority revolved around similar calls for more MP autonomy.

As it happens Harper’s position vis-à-vis his base has weakened further in the short time since the party’s convention.

Last week, an RCMP affidavit brought to light evidence that suggests Sen. Irving Gerstein, the party’s top bagman, seriously entertained using party funds to reimburse disgraced Sen. Mike Duffy’s housing allowance on his behalf until it was found that the bill was three times higher than originally estimated. That is not what he implied at the convention.

The absence of a comprehensive explanation for the discrepancy between Gerstein’s convention remarks and the emails brought to light by the RCMP has left Conservative donors in the dark as to how much of a blank cheque they are handing their party when they make a contribution to its coffers.

Earlier this week scores of past Conservative supporters in Manitoba, Toronto and Montreal either stayed home or switched their vote to the Liberals. A sharp drop in Conservative support was a feature in all four byelections. A CTV-Ipsos poll reports that the Liberals now enjoy a six-point lead nationally.

Through it all Harper and his handlers have stuck to their business-as-usual mantra.

There is more than one sign that a government is not aging well, but tone deafness is always one of them.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com